Clearly, Aiden had returned to the truck at some point. But why did he leave again?
As Paul drove south on Allendar toward the far side of town, putting distance between them and Lister Park, Eric examined the lone item he found inside the plastic bag: an old, well-worn notebook.
“What’s it say?” asked Paul.
Eric shook his head. “It’s nonsense to me.” It appeared to be a journal of some sort, but very little of it made any sense. “I think it might be Glen Normer’s.”
“There’s nothing useful in it?”
“Nothing I can make any sense out of. It starts out by saying, ‘The greatest secret of the universe is hidden all around us in plain sight. We’re just too blind to see it.’”
“Deep. So what is this great secret?”
“Doesn’t say.”
“Of course it doesn’t.”
“Well, it does say it’s a secret.”
“True.”
He flipped forward through the pages. “It goes on to quote a bunch of random-looking scripture. Then it suddenly deteriorates into several pages of sloppy, shorthand notes that I can’t read.” Glen Normer’s handwriting was atrocious. Many pages were almost illegible. What he was able to read was little better. “There’s a list of locations. Unseen, I’m assuming. There are dozens of them, from all over the country. Then more scripture… Here’s something about men trying to kill him: ‘Monsters that look like men.’ ‘Terrible, ungodly powers.’”
“Sounds like the kind of people you’ve been making friends with lately.”
“It does.” Eric skimmed on. “This looks like something he copied out of a scientific journal. Some kind of complex formula… Really?”
“Math, too? I’m so out of my league.”
“Here’re the numbers from those symbols we’ve been finding… More shorthand… This part looks like Mandarin or something.”
“Mandarin? As in Chinese?”
Eric shrugged and continued skimming the pages. It was less a journal than a disjointed, paranoid account of a man’s unhealthy obsession with something that could only be imaginary. Except that he’d witnessed some of these things for himself. “Here’s a detailed description of those creatures I’ve been seeing.” There were other monstrous things described in the pages, too, including something that sounded like a bizarre cross between a crocodile and the sarlacc pit from Return of the Jedi.
Eric couldn’t help but wonder if Aiden’s mentor might have been utterly insane. And yet, there were obviously nuggets of truth scattered throughout the journal.
“Anything about AG?”
“Nothing I can see.”
“I don’t suppose it tells us where we should go next, then.”
“That would be helpful, but no. Unless it’s all hidden in here somewhere.” Eric flipped through the journal again. There were at least eighty pages of this nonsense. It would take hours to peruse it front to back. It would take days more to translate the Mandarin and try to make sense of the shorthand and random chunks of mathematical equations.
It was difficult to believe this thing was real.
“According to Pinky back there, this guy was one of them once. Given the crazy stuff we know about that organization, is it possible he just lost it?”
“If this is any indication, it’s not out of the question. Not by a long shot.” Pink Shirt had even told him that men like Normer were known to occasionally go mad in the field. The more Eric looked at it, the more it seemed that was precisely the case.
“So then why did the kid leave it for us?”
That was a damn good question. Another good question was, why was this journal so important that he went out of his way not only to retrieve it from the wall in the motel but also to snatch it out of his backpack before the aura plasma fire could destroy it?
Eric checked the plastic bag again, but nothing else was inside.
What was he missing?
The last few pages were blank. Glen had reached either the end of his peculiar ramblings or the end of his troubled life. (Eric had a dreadful feeling it was the latter.) Leafing through these final blank pages one at a time, he found a single, scrawled note. “Boxlar,” he read. Under that: “One, one, seven.”
“Boxlar?”
“Written in the back. Handwriting looks different.”
Paul looked over at him. “Boxlar Road, maybe?”
“There’s a Boxlar Road?”
“Behind the fire station.”
“Oh.”
“How long have you lived in this town?”
Eric shot him an annoyed look. “Who memorizes all the street names?”
“I’d think it’d just sink in after a while.”
Eric returned his gaze to the book. “One seventeen Boxlar Road then, Map Guru.”
Paul chuckled and turned on his blinker. Circling the block, he pointed the pickup back the way they’d come. “So you think Aiden wrote that note?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. How far is Boxlar from the park?”
“It’s not that close.”
“Could he have walked there by now?”
Paul considered it. “Not on foot. You think we should search the roads between there and the park, see if we can spot him?”
Eric shook his head. He doubted very much that they’d see him if he didn’t want to be seen. “Let’s just go. We’re probably still being watched, so let’s try to get there before the bad guys.”
Paul turned at the next intersection and made his way to the fire station. Within a few minutes they were pulling into 117 Boxlar Road and parking the Ford next to an old, powder blue Chrysler New Yorker.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” exclaimed Paul.
Eric was thinking pretty much the same thing. There, stretching out before them, were the somber grounds of Donnelfolk Cemetery.
“What the hell are we supposed to do here?”
I was a good question. Was this really where they were supposed to be? All they had was a name and a number in the back of a madman’s journal. And yet, this was 117 Boxlar Road. Those two lines had led them to a real place right here in Creek Bend. It was difficult to dismiss it as a coincidence.
Paul sighed. “Well, let’s get it over with.”
Eric opened the door and stepped out. Get it over with indeed. Shading his eyes with his hand, he scanned the headstones. This was the largest cemetery in the city. He couldn’t see the far end from here, much less the two long legs that branched off to the west. At least three thousand gravestones lay before them. Were they supposed to find something here?
“Maybe A. G. is a person’s initials,” suggested Paul as he examined the neatly mown grounds.
“How many of these stones do you think have those initials on them?”
“Didn’t say it sounded easy.”
“And even if we do find an A. G. in this cemetery and somehow know we’re in the right place…then what? It’s not like we can ask the guy if he knows anything.”
“I sure hope not.”
Eric ran his hand through his hair. Why would Aiden send them here? Did Aiden send them here? Or was “Boxlar one one seven” something else, something that had nothing to do with any of this?
“You think there’s something unseen around here?”
“Maybe. But Aiden said there were only seven of them. Eight, now that we found those rail cars.”
“Maybe he lied. Or maybe he didn’t know this one was here until he saw that rock you guys found.”
“I don’t know. Let’s just have a look around. Maybe something will stand out if we see it.”
Paul nodded and set out into the cemetery without another word.
Eric followed him. This seemed wrong. This wasn’t some cheesy haunted house set. This was a modern cemetery. He’d attended burials here. He had family buried in these rows.
This whole day had felt bizarrely personal. He couldn’t believe all the crazy things he was experiencing were happening right here in his own hometown. He could walk to all these places from his house. He knew the people here. He taught their children in his classes.
It made it all feel less real somehow.
“Peaceful, isn’t it?” said Paul as he looked out at the rows of headstones.
“It should be.”
Paul chuckled.
Eric read the headstones as he walked by. He recognized almost all of the surnames here.
Karen’s cell phone sang again. No name appeared on the screen and he didn’t recognize the number. Again, he let it go to voice mail.
Paul glanced back at him and grinned. “Hey. Do you remember how you used to always want to watch those scary movies I liked to rent?”
Eric smiled. “Mom always said no, but I kept begging her until she gave in.”
“She’d give me grief every time I picked one up in the video store. And I don’t think you ever made it to the end of one.”
“Not for years, I don’t think.”
Paul shook his head. “You used to be scared of everything.”
“I don’t think I was scared of everything.”
“You were. I used to scare you so easy.”
“I hated that you did that, you know.”
“Remember that old monster mask I had? The green one?”
“I really hated that thing.”
“You were so funny. You’d practically climb the walls when I put it on.”
“You did think it was funny.”
“Not as funny as this.”
Eric looked at him. “As what?”
“This. All this stuff today.”
“I’m not sure I see what’s so funny about it.”
“You. That’s what. You just keep going. You don’t even hesitate.”
Eric looked back toward the truck. They were about halfway to the far end of the cemetery now. So far, there was nothing here that stood out. “I don’t have time to hesitate. That note this morning, those strange phone calls from my lost phone…they keep telling me that someone’s going to die today. I can’t let that happen.”
“Yeah. I get that.”
“Then what’s so funny about that?”
Paul chuckled. “It’s just ironic.”
“Why is it ironic?”
“Because you’re the one sitting through the movie now. And I’m the one ready to crawl under the covers and hide.”
“You?”
“Jesus, Eric, I’m terrified. This is all seriously fucked up. There’s a deranged cowboy with the ability to create vicious monsters out of thin air trying to kill you. I’m way out of my league here. I wouldn’t know what to do with myself.”
Eric stopped and turned to face him. “Really?”
“Yeah, really.”
“Then…why are you here? Why did you try to follow me last year?”
Again, Paul laughed. “The same reason you wanted to watch those movies.”
“I wanted to be like my big brother.”
Paul shrugged. “I wouldn’t’ve made it sound so sappy.”
Eric smiled and started walking again. He was right. It really was ironic, now that he thought about it. “Well I think this is all pretty terrifying, too, so there you go.”
Paul’s smile broadened. “That’s okay. Back when we were kids, I used to think those movies were pretty terrifying, too. I just liked that you thought I was so brave.”
They turned west and followed the woods around the back leg of the cemetery. It was extra peaceful back here, out of sight of the nearby roads. Beyond these trees were quiet neighborhoods.
In the very back corner, where the cemetery nosed into the woods at the corner of the property, was the oldest of the cemetery’s restful residents. There, they saw someone.
“Hey,” said Paul. “Is that Aiden?”
It did indeed look like Aiden. He was still wearing the blue hoodie. But how had he beaten them here?
“What’s he doing?”
Eric wasn’t sure. He shaded his eyes again. He looked like he was…
He felt his heart drop.
“Holy shit…” stammered Paul. “Is he digging?”